The outgoing Czech president is ahead in the elections, according to the partial recount

Ⓒ AFP – Michal Cizek – | Czech President Milos Zeman (center) votes in Prague on January 26, 2018 in the second round of the presidential elections of the Czech Republic

The outgoing Czech president, the pro-Russian Milos Zeman, headed the presidential elections on Saturday ahead of the pro-European academic Jiri Drahos, with almost ten percentage points of advantage, once 62% of the votes were counted.

Zeman, 73, won 54.4% of the vote, compared to 45.6% in Drahos, 68, according to Czech public television.

“Allow me to thank all the voters who participated in these elections,” Drahos said in his first reaction, not wanting to comment on the provisional results.

“The current trend allows us to think of a victory for Milos Zeman,” analyst Pavel Saradin, of Palacky d’Olomouc University, said on his public television station CT, but said that this partial scrutiny did not yet include the results of the elections. big cities.

Zeman, known for his anti-immigrant stance and confrontations with the European Union, enjoys broad support in the field, while his rival Drahos is the favorite of the intellectual media and the cities.

This is the second presidential election of direct universal suffrage in the history of the Czech Republic.